Teenager accused of Hartlepool murder says she did not try to destroy evidence

Tom Patterson

A teenager accused of murdering Hartlepool woman Angela Wrightson has denied trying to destroy evidence of her role in the death

The 14-year-old - one of two teenagers accused of murdering Ms Wrightson - was being questioned at Leeds Crown Court by prosecutor Nicholas Campbell QC on forensic evidence which suggested she had taken her boots off at the scene.

“Can you remember any time that you were walking in Angela Wrightson’s home that night without your Ugg boots on?” asked Mr Campbell, to which the girl replied “No.

”“Can you remember taking your boots off to clean them?” he asked, which she also denied.

“Did you try to get rid of evidence on your boots?” asked Mr Campbell. “No,” replied the girl.“Had you been kicking and stamping on Angela?” asked Mr Campbell.

“No,” she said.

Ms Wrightson, aged 39, was found partially clothed in her home in Stephen Street, Hartlepool, by her landlord on the morning of Tuesday, December 9, 2014.

The 14-year-old and the other defendant, now 15, deny murder. Neither can be named for legal reasons.

Mr Campbell asked the girl why she and her co-accused had left Ms Wrightson’s house only to return a short time later. “Were you enjoying yourself?” he asked.

“No,” she replied.

“Were you finding that you were getting a thrill out of the activities that night?” “No,” she said.

The court heard the girl had sent her co-accused a message several weeks before Ms Wrightson’s death, referring to the 15-year-old as her ‘little partner in crime.’

“What did you mean by that?” asked Mr Campbell.

The teenager replied that the other girl used to say it to her, “so I put it in there.”

Asked what she thought the older girl meant by it, she said: “I did not know, to be honest.”

She told the jury that although they had seen each other ‘every other day’ they had not been best friends.

“I did not really have a best friend, I was just knocking about with other people,” she said.

Mr Campbell asked the girl “Do you know the expression ‘the two of us against the world’?” and she said she did not.

He asked her “Did you feel that this was you and (older girl) with everyone against you?” to which she replied, “No.”

The girl denied she had every had any problem with Miss Wrightson but said they had once had a ‘disagreement.’ Asked why, she replied “Because she locked me in her house.”

The court heard the girl had been to a friend’s house on the night Miss Wrightson died, but had left.

Asked if she was bored with her friend, the girl replied: “I was not bored. I just started bickering with her.”

Asked by Mr Campbell if she was ‘looking for a good time’ after leaving her friend’s house, she said: “No, I was going to go to my Mam’s.”